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Just depends what's meant by urban. On density alone LA wins but I think most would argue that there's a little more to it than just density. Boston is more walkable, more lively, and has a more urban built form than LA
In that "What if your city was 47 square miles thread," I believe Boston was denser than L.A. once you included surrounding areas such as Cambridge and Somerville. After 47 square miles, however, Los Angeles pulls away from Boston and from the rest of the pack for that matter (with perhaps the exception of Chicago at 200 square miles or so).
The only city that can't keep stride with L.A. on a pure density basis is DC.
That 47 square mile cutoff makes some sense to me. How many cities outside of NYC have any type of interesting urbanity outside of 47 square miles? That's basically Manhattan and a huge chunk of Brooklyn.
In that "What if your city was 47 square miles thread," I believe Boston was denser than L.A. once you included surrounding areas such as Cambridge and Somerville. After 47 square miles, however, Los Angeles pulls away from Boston and from the rest of the pack for that matter (with perhaps the exception of Chicago at 200 square miles or so).
The only city that can't keep stride with L.A. on a pure density basis is DC.
That 47 square mile cutoff makes some sense to me. How many cities outside of NYC have any type of interesting urbanity outside of 47 square miles? That's basically Manhattan and a huge chunk of Brooklyn.
It will be so interesting having this discussion after the new census. D.C. has developed more vacant land than any other city in this debate. It's too bad we only have access to numbers prior to D.C.'s boom. Most of D.C.'s growth has been in new neighborhoods such as Capital Riverfront, NOMA/Union Market, The Wharf/SW Waterfront, Brookland, and now there is major growth happening in Ward 7 and Ward 8.
It will be so interesting having this discussion after the new census. D.C. has developed more vacant land than any other city in this debate. It's too bad we only have access to numbers prior to D.C.'s boom. Most of D.C.'s growth has been in new neighborhoods such as Capital Riverfront, NOMA/Union Market, The Wharf/SW Waterfront, Brookland, and now there is major growth happening in Ward 7 and Ward 8.
DC needs to have a population of approximately 1.1 million people to match the human density of these other cities.
DC will never be that dense and it certainly won't get there by adding buildings with an average household size of 1.2
From what I remember, Boston's 47 square milesstill came out less than Los Angeles, even including Cambridge and Somerville. It was 800-900,000 in 47 square miles. Boston is just smaller.
From what I remember, Boston's 47 square milesstill came out less than Los Angeles, even including Cambridge and Somerville. It was 800-900,000 in 47 square miles. Boston is just smaller.
SoCal is not within driving distance of NorCal? 20-25 million people in LA/OC/SD and points around can't drive 5-8 hours up? Moreover, there are more people in nearby Sacramento (and other parts of NorCal) than there are people in Austin (talking adjacent metros). So I don't buy the driving argument (not to mention the world's busiest air route or at least #2 is LA-SF, particularly when you factor in all the airports in each metro area...something like 3 or 4 million people a year fly between the two cities alone).
So you wouldn't say that the:
Washington Monument observatory
National Museum of American History
National Museum of Natural History
National Gallery of Art
National Museum of the American Indian
National Air and Space Museum
Hirshorn Museum
Smithsonian Castle
Freer Gallery
Touring the US Capitol
Taking a picture in front of the White House
Newseum
US Holocaust Museum
and touring the Bureau of Printing and Engraving
aren't things to do on/along the National Mall?
DC does have higher population (in smaller area, along with more amenities, more office space, more of everything), but really I'm thinking about the 5-6 million people that surround DC and are DC-centric versus the 2 million people that surround Baltimore. That's a huge difference.
See above - Baltimore and Boston are the "same size" the way you're looking at it. And Jacksonville is larger. None of that is true. Baltimore is much larger than Jacksonville, and Boston is much larger than Baltimore.
Given the context, it seems pretty obvious that he was thinking about driving distance (which is definitely a loose term since Montreal is definitely in driving distance of Los Angeles since you can technically drive there) in terms of a day trip. Given that, it's pretty rare that someone would drive up from LA or SD to the Bay Area as a day trip. It's definitely something that gets done for a long weekend or something longer, but long weekends and longer are a much higher barrier than a day trip is. It's interesting, because in general people have pretty standard work weeks and so there's probably a pretty steep drop off for certain trips among day trips, weekend trips, and long weekend trips. For me and those I know, in terms of Los Angeles and south, long weekends were good for SF, but weekends just didn't seem worth it unless you got out early on Friday or could come in later on Monday, while Vegas weekend trips were doable though that drive was something like just an hour and a half to two hours shorter each way shorter.
I'm not looking at it that way. I'm telling the guy how to put it into perspective because physical land area of legal boundaries doesn't give anyone a particularly realistic measure of things.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-24-2015 at 06:11 PM..
I think nei had posted some really good density calculations before. Probably time to repost those. Do estimates (like the 2014 one) give census tract level resolution?
It will be so interesting having this discussion after the new census. D.C. has developed more vacant land than any other city in this debate. It's too bad we only have access to numbers prior to D.C.'s boom. Most of D.C.'s growth has been in new neighborhoods such as Capital Riverfront, NOMA/Union Market, The Wharf/SW Waterfront, Brookland, and now there is major growth happening in Ward 7 and Ward 8.
Aren't there 2014 census estimates? Those were for July 1st, 2014, I believe. That's about a year away, but I think DCs boom was before that.
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